Thank you for your post Debbie. We are happy to monitor interest in this topic.

What I can confirm is that in a future release we will be adding additional functionality to SMS reminders in Front Desk so that they can automatically be sent to a patient at a particular offset before the appointment e.g. 24 hours before an appointment but not before 9AM or after 6PM.

The way SMS and Emails are sent through Front Desk are fundamentally different. SMS sent in Front Desk are uploaded to our gateway, which has the ability to send them at a particular time, even if your computer is off. Emails however, are sent through your email system and internet service provider, which generally doesn't have the ability to delay the sending to a recipient. We are investigating being able to invoke delay send for users running their own server based MS Exchange email systems or having Smartsoft send emails on your behalf.

As a side note, industry experience tell us that SMS have a better ability to get a message (such as an appointment reminder) to and read by a client, so it should be your preferred method to send appointment reminders.